


Drifting Away

by GreenElphaba



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenElphaba/pseuds/GreenElphaba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty years after the events of Slayers Try, the world is changed and the magical races have a new and terrible enemy. Filia and Xellos must team up to save the world and, with any luck, themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Old Foes

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this more than ten years ago, and I never finished it, and in the meantime my style advanced and I decided that what I had originally written sucked. I wasn't wrong, either. But the idea stuck in my head anyway, so I thought I'd take a crack at rewriting it, and so far I don't hate the results

Ch. 1: In Which Two Old Foes Are Thrown Together Again

It was quiet—restful even, in the sickroom. The curtains were drawn close, and the light that filtered in was wan and respectful of the somber atmosphere. There was a bed, small and neat and cozy, and in the bed the child slept quietly. There were scars on his shoulder, but the wounds had healed months ago, while his eyes remained closed to the bed, the light, and the woman who came and went in increasing silence as the months went by, as though the child’s slumbering form breathed an air that made her ghostlike too. She was gone now, and the chair which had sat for half a year by the child’s side, waiting on the ebb and flow of its only occupant, was gone as well. And the boy, his long hair carefully smoothed back from his face, slept on.  
The boy’s mother walked in silence behind a sullen priestess, and her weariness lent her a calm that asked no questions. She knew already that none of her queries would be answered—she would find out what they wanted her to know when she got to the audience hall—but even so her nervousness might have made her babble if she’d had the energy. Come to the temple, the Elders had said. You’ve studied this danger; we need you as a consultant. A small sop, that, from men who hadn’t spoken to her for half a century. I really thought I was the last, she reflected sourly. How well the Supreme Elder manipulated me, even at the end. But no, the temple was rebuilt and she, prodigal daughter that she was, could not have returned even if she’d been able to stomach it.  
And so the years go by, she thought, although it was with a sour belly that she recognized how little the decades had touched this place. Like a phoenix from the proverbial ashes, the temple of the Fire Dragon King was rebuilt and repopulated, in all its soporific splendor.  
Filia had refused to transform; had refused too to teleport from her home to the temple; if they were peremptory enough to summon her from the side of her comatose child, they would at least be good enough to wait for a more mundane arrival. The priestess who had delivered the summons had been awful company, though Filia supposed it wasn’t entirely the young woman’s fault. After all, she mused, I was quick enough to believe everything I was told, and this girl is barely out of childhood herself. The gods only know what they’ve said of me. Filia the Apostate . . . hah! As though there was any true faith in any of them. At least the Supreme Elder, may he rest however he deserves, had the courage not to scatter with the others from Valgaav’s coming like so many cockroaches from a boot. I wonder—  
“We’ve arrived,” the young priestess announced stiffly, interrupting Filia’s musings. Filia pulled up short, narrowly avoiding running into the younger woman, and finally raised her gaze from her feet. The main audience hall was as large as it had ever been, if perhaps a trifle less richly decorated, and many of the seats were empty. Still, the six Elders who remained made an impressive enough display as they stared down in impotent rage from their high table.  
They weren’t staring at her, although it took Filia a moment to realize it, but at a slim dark figure much closer to them. For an instant, Filia’s mind simply refused to recognize him, refused to take the shadow that lived in her memory and breathe it suddenly into life and motion. But no, there was only the one, there could be no one else of such rich dark energy—energy she’d tasted once, so long ago that it seemed part of some other life.  
“Xellos,” she breathed, in shock and anger and a terrible awakening hope.

He turned around, and she caught just a flash of drowning purple before his mask settled perfectly on his face. “Why, Filia!” he chirped, for all the world as though he made social calls into enemy territory all the time. “Fancy meeting you here! I thought you’d been officially labeled a bad seed. Have they let you back into the fold, then?”  
“Do I look like a priestess to you?” Filia replied dryly, indicating her shabby and homespun attire. Or at least, she meant to. The new Supreme Elder talked over her, and what Filia thought was some fairly decent repartee was lost in his authoritative drone.  
“The one called Filia is no longer of our order, Beast Priest. She is here today only as a consultant. Pay her no mind.”  
“Is that so?” One of Xellos’s eyebrows ascended into his bangs, although he was still looking at her—or at least facing her. What he actually saw, in the shuttered amiability of his closed eyes, she’d never been able to guess. “Has she experienced these creatures then, Supreme Elder?” From his tone, he might have been speaking of some variety of garden pest and not the most effective enemy their two races had ever faced.  
The Elder’s face settled into deep lines of disapproval. “What she has or has not experienced is of no matter here, enemy!” another shrilled. “You are here to select a member of our order to accompany you, not to gossip about an apostate.”  
Filia was so shocked by the Elder’s bluntness that she only gasped. Xellos’s smile took on an edge she remembered far too well, and he slowly turned back to face the council. Although his back was to her, Filia still felt that his next remarks were addressed her way, and it was beyond strange to stand in a room that had once been home to her and know that a Mazoku was the closest thing she had in this place to a friend.  
“Forgive me for restating what we’ve already gone over, Elders, but I wish if I may to summarize.” He didn’t wait for permission. “Our world faces a danger that has no name, and about which we know almost nothing. They feed on magic, and while they are devastating to humans they are fatal to both Mazoku and Ryuuzoku. Correct?” Again, he didn’t pause for a response. “And of course, there is the small fact that of your race, no one has fought them with any measure of success.”  
“Your people have also been killed in great numbers,” the Supreme Elder ground out.  
“So very true, but I have the advantage of not much minding. To continue: it has been proposed by the higher-ups of the monster race—and backed by your own gods, I might add—that a dragon and a monster join forces and try to penetrate to the heart of these creatures’ territory and discover their origin so that we might destroy them. Have I left anything out?”  
“You are correct, Mazoku, although the Fire Dragon King has not told us why we must join forces with the likes of you in order to destroy this menace.”  
“Chaos magic,” Filia surprised herself by saying it aloud—too loud, in fact. Now she was the focus of all their attention. I’m not a little girl anymore, to be intimidated into silence, she told herself, and stepped forward. “The magical signatures of a Mazoku and a Ryuuzoku should cancel each other out if they stay near each other. If these---these Things can’t smell magic, they won’t attack.”  
“So very true,” Xellos replied, amusement in every syllable. “And it just so happens, Elders, that my choice to accompany me . . . is her.”  
Filia stared at him, at the finger pointed squarely at her, and her exclamation echoed the sentiment of everyone in the room. “What?!”


	2. Things are Wet

Ch. 2: In Which Things Are Depressingly Wet

The two travelers splashed sputtering through the pouring rain, up to the door of the last inn in town, hoping this one wouldn’t be full. Filia dashed her wet bangs out of her eyes and pounded on the door. “Hey in there! Please open the door!” The night was freezing cold, the rain mixed with sleet, and to the desert-bred dragon it might as well have been snowing. Xellos was less affected by the weather, but he joined in gamely enough, knocking and yelling until at last the door cracked open slightly to reveal a portly, yawning innkeeper.  
“Yeah?” the man demanded grumpily. “Whaddaya want? It’s late; we’re closed, and whatever you’re selling, we’re not buying any.”  
“Oh, please let us in, sir,” the former priestess wailed, her eyes filling with tears that were just a little more genuine than she would have liked. _You’re just tired_ , she told herself. “It’s cold outside and we need a place to stay. There aren’t any other inns left in town—you’re our only hope!”  
The innkeeper thought for a moment, scratching his chin, but stood aside to let them in. “As long as you’ve got money, we’ve got room,” he told them, far more grudgingly than such an egalitarian statement should indicate.  
“Don’t worry about that,” Xellos spoke up, his perpetual cheer like an icepick to the ear. “We don’t need anything fancy, after all.” He grinned disarmingly, and Filia was piqued to see the innkeeper visibly thaw.  
“Ah, a priest are you? Well, your holiness, let’s get you and your lady settled in.”  
Filia opened her mouth to dispute _that_ statement, but somehow Xellos’s staff found its way between her feet at that exact moment, and her angry protest got cut off in a surprised squeal.  
“Careful now,” the Mazoku said, offering his arm with a pitch-perfect expression of concern, and for perhaps the hundredth time Filia wondered how he had ever gotten so good at aping emotion. For the innkeeper’s benefit she took the offered arm, and satisfied herself by pinching him viciously in the ribs.  
Xellos only smiled, of course, what Filia privately thought of as the perpetual amiable grin of the concussed. Vengeance delivered, she stood back and let him finish dickering. _Filthy northern habit_ , she thought wearily, remembering other, brighter times.  
“So, for a room and board, dry pajamas and towels, shall we say sixteen copper pieces?” Xellos inquired.  
As the innkeeper made sounds suggesting that His Holiness was taking bread straight from the mouths of his many children, Filia sighed and let her attention wander in earnest.  
Everyone on both sides, it seemed, agreed that these Things, whatever they were, were coming from the north, so it was north that she and Xellos went. They’d teleported to the edge of where the Mazoku Barrier had once begun, and from there had gone on foot. Endlessly on foot, no teleporting or flying. Mile after tense mile, and all of it in the unrelenting company of the monster race’s Chipper Mascot, Xellos Godsdamned Metallium.  
The last two months had been difficult, to say the least, though Filia was horrified to discover that the Mazoku’s presence was at least mildly comforting in this world gone mad. _Better the evil you know, I suppose_ , she thought, though it left a strange taste in her mouth.  
Her wandering thoughts rejoined the task at hand in time to hear the innkeeper apologizing. “Sorry we have only the one room left, your Holiness, and of course it’s quite small, which is why it hasn’t been sold yet this evening. We’re full to the brim every night, I’m afraid, what with the priest-folk and sorcerers fleeing them critters in the mountains, and while I’m grateful for the business I wish it weren’t from such trouble.” He continued babbling as he led them upstairs, and under cover of the noise Filia hissed, “One room, Xellos? You must be joking!”  
“Perhaps your modesty would prefer camping out in the rain,” he muttered back, and she had no answer to that. _And after all, he only_ looks _like a man_ , she reminded herself.

The room was indeed small, a mere attic afterthought high under the eaves of the inn, a handsbreadth from the storm outside. There was a single bed, sagging under the weight of its own mattress and dusty quilt, hard by the wall at the low end of the roof. There was a glowing brazier which provided as much smoke as heat, a lamp on a low table, a coat-rack, and a small window which was a square of freezing blue in the wall. A chair in one corner and a faded rag rug in front of the bed completed the furnishings of the room. From end to end, it was perhaps a dozen paces, and fewer across. Filia sighed, but she was by now far too cold to complain, her arms drawn tight across her aching chest and her teeth chattering even when she clenched them.  
“I’ll be right back with dry clothes and food,” the fat innkeep told them. Then, hoping probably for more money, he added, “Would either of you like anything else?”  
“H-h- hot t-t-t-tea,” Filia stammered between numb lips, and Xellos tilted his head in what she might have believed was concern, if he’d been human.  
“Yes, for both of us I think, and if you have any extra blankets I would appreciate them, as it seems I’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight.” He slipped coins into the man’s pudgy hands and turned away, dismissal evident in his manner. The innkeeper took the hint, and Filia nearly set herself on fire trying to get warm over the little brazier.  
When their host’s footsteps had receded, silence fell. Filia was too cold at the moment to feel much awkwardness, but all the same it was the first time on this journey she’d been forced into such close quarters with Xellos. “Wh- what do you need blankets for?” she asked to fill the sudden quiet. “I can’t imagine you actually getting cold.”  
“No, I don’t really feel the cold, but I do feel hard wooden floors just fine,” he replied, stripping off his sodden boots and gloves. His cape, too, was removed, and placed on the coat rack.  
“Do Mazoku sleep?” Filia asked, surprised.  
He quirked an eyebrow at her, clearly amused. “What did you think I’ve been doing in inn room after inn room on this journey, Filia?”  
“I don’t know, plotting the end of the world?” she snapped, angry at having given it so little thought.  
Her anger, as usual, had no effect on him except to widen his smile. “Now, now, we’re _saving_ the world, Filia, remember? _Saving_ it.” He paused. “Again.” There was a wealth of subtext in the final word, layers of meaning that sent uncomfortable prickles down her spine. The dragon straightened, and in the red glazed darkness they stared at each other for a long moment. It occurred to Filia to wonder for the first time if he ever thought of her as she sometimes thought of him, if her blazing light haunted his nightmares—if indeed he could even dream. She opened her mouth to ask, but what came out instead was, “Do your people revile you as mine do me, for fighting Valgaav?”  
She startled him out of the mask, his eyes opening to reveal the enigmatic creature within, in an instant of naked surprise. And it must have been the shock, truly, that pushed words out of him in a breathless rush: “They have never liked me.” The statement came to her flat and unadorned, terrible with no smile around it and his killer’s eyes quiet on her face.  
The innkeeper entered without knocking and began stacking things on the small table, oblivious to the tableau. Xellos turned away at once, entirely a clown once more, and Filia was torn between relief and aggravation. She ignored the man until he went away again, not caring that she seemed rude, not even caring that Xellos was handling the minutiae of their journey far better than she.  
She realized the innkeeper was gone only when her mind registered silence in the chilly room, and she looked up to find Xellos staring at her with an unreadable expression.  
With great dignity, she took a towel and a pair of pink pajamas from the stack on the table. “Turn around or leave,” she told him flatly, far too tired for even a semblance of the games women and men played. Other women. Other men.  
With a smile, he did so, and it was with profound relief that Filia shucked out of her soaked clothes. Her flesh was clammy to her touch, like a fish, and the dry pajamas did not immediately help.  
“You’re different,” Xellos’s voice floated over his shoulder to her, and in his tone was ... what? Accusation? Disapproval, even? Now that stung, and from him of all people.  
“People change,” she told him, angry and hating how the chill made her skin feel corpse-cold. The anger was good; it drowned out her weariness, allowed her to forget all the unspoken sentiments and desperate nightmares that plagued her from day to day, year to year, decade to decade.  
“Ryuuzoku don’t, as a rule,” he replied, indifference and mockery crowding his tone.  
“Ryuuzoku?!” Her voice was too loud and she didn’t care; this was a dance they performed much better than the careful tension of the last months. Dressed, she whipped him around, as if to prove to herself that he was solid. “Ha! They’d have fired me from the damn race if they could have. Do you know I’ve had to move seventeen times in the last fifty years? _Seventeen times_ , Xellos, and all to keep those noble cowards away from Val. And where, pray tell, were you? Or Lina? Or anyone else who was _there_?” Her fist was knotted in his soggy shirt and she registered with dim gratification that she’d surprised his eyes open again. “Don’t lecture me about my race, Xellos, with our blood on you to the elbows and the luxury of being able to escape!” Ooh, that was too much, the outriders of too many things she never even let herself think too loudly, too much truth naked and stinking like a rush of hot vomit over her teeth. _When did this evening go so badly off the rails_? She wondered. _And what, blessed gods, is wrong with me?_  
His eyes made light but illuminated nothing, reflected nothing, amethyst glass over a deep and treacherous pool. Damned eyes, Mazoku eyes . . . and nearly as tired as her own, Filia realized, beneath it all. She opened her mouth again, although already the night had been strange enough that she herself had no idea what was about to emerge, but—perhaps not wanting to know himself—Xellos forestalled her.  
“How is Valtierra, anyways?” He asked, as polite as if they were at the grocer’s.  
She let him go and turned back to the brazier. “Comatose for the last half-year,” she told him, anger dying away again into bitter weariness. “Those… whatever they are got him.” She stretched her hands out, willing the thin heat to penetrate any part of her. She was unprepared for Xellos’s reaction.  
“What??” He grabbed her roughly, shook her until her teeth rattled and she recoiled from the naked fury radiating from him. “Those creatures . . . the last Ancient . . . how could you—”  
She slapped him across the face with all the strength in her, not in that moment caring even if he killed her, just as long as she could stop that flow of words. “Bastard!” She hissed. “How dare you? How _dare_ you? Your responsibility was not less than mine, you son of a bitch, and you _left_. We all just scattered to the four winds, and I got left with no home, an egg to raise, and no skills other than a side interest in antiques! The story ended, you all went home heroes, and I ended up a single parent two hundred percent richer in Beastmen!” She was crying now, the tears poison-hot on her icy cheeks, and she hated herself for it. “I will accept no judgment from you, Xellos Metallium! I did my best!” And with that, Filia turned on her heel and buried herself in the musty bed, determined to ignore her stunned companion for the rest of the night. “I’m done talking,” she said dully, and closed her eyes. She fell asleep to the sound of him pacing, no doubt angry that circumstances required him to stay near her.  
She woke again, sometime in the bitter hours, to find him still awake. He’d eschewed the inn’s pajamas but had at least taken off his wet shirt, and his dimly-outlined form was surprisingly human. She shifted, and found he’d piled the extra blankets on her. “Xellos . . .” she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”  
“Not tonight,” he replied quietly, and shifted on the chair. “Filia, I’m sorry.”  
“You s—what?”  
“You surprised me,” he continued, quiet and meditative, and _oh_ , this was the man and he was so much worse than the monster, Filia thought with a catch in her throat. Nine times out of ten when she dreamed of him it was his razor-wire laugh and Valgaav screaming that she heard, and she woke securely tucked into her hatred. But the tenth dream . . . in the tenth dream it was Xellos the man she saw, who had protected them when it wasn’t important, who had teased her to make her stronger, who had burnt his edges in her light without a second thought when the world was at stake. She swallowed hard, wishing she’d just stayed asleep.  
“I used to look in from time to time,” he continued, “but I must admit it never occurred to me to announce myself. I thought—well, I thought you’d meet me at the door with righteousness and threats.”  
“I probably would have,” she admitted. Then, “Is there any way to get more heat in here?”  
“Hm? Are you still cold?”  
“I’m not used to these northern winters, you know.”  
He chuckled. “It’s not even Year End, and there’s a lot more north to go. If you’re cold now, I’ll be able to sled my way back down out of the mountains on your frozen corpse.”  
Filia pursed her lips, reflecting acidly on the morbidity of Mazoku. “And with that, Xellos, goodnight. Again.”  
He chuckled again, rich and low. “Sleep tight, Filia.”  
She shivered and laid back down.


End file.
